A little ghetto in our life.

I don't know how many people are aware of the massive city wide event that takes place in Tracy twice a year. This is a day that the town comes together....we all seem to end up sharing items we never thought we would share. Trash Day. This is not any ordinary trash day....no, this is the day when you are allowed to put anything (and I mean anything) out on the curb and they will come by and pick it up. I think we were a little shocked the first year we lived here butt his is quickly becoming a day we look forward to. Not only can we get rid of all the random things sitting on the side of the house, but also it is sheer entertainment.

For our neighborhood the trash gets picked up on Fridays, this means the fun begin Thursday. People are slowly starting to move things to the curb, as this process begins the creepers emerge. These are the dozens and dozens of people that will drive though the neighborhoods with pickups, vans, trailer and box trucks looking to see if one mans trash can become another mans treasure. So last night Bryan and I started to go through the house, the yard and the garage to see what we could add to our pile. The first things to go out was our old BBQ. Chris and I were in the yard cutting flowers while Bryan took the BBQ to the curb. In the time that it took Bryan to walk back in to the yard we heard a strange squeaking noise. Bryan peaked over our side fence to see our neighbors little girl quickly dragging our BBQ back to her dad sitting in a lawn chair in their garage. Classic, this thing was not on the curb for more then 2 minutes before it got snatched. Later that evening we even saw him testing it out in his gargae to see if it worked. Well the rest of the night we spent dragging things one by one out to the curb. All night there was a steady stream of people driving by with their trucks to see what they could find.

This morning I was getting the kids ready to leave when I noticed something in front of another house on our street. It was our BBQ, but it looked a little different. Seems as though the neighbors that took it did not need the whole thing, so they just took the parts they needed and put it on the curb....but not theirs. I guess they did not want to seem rude so they put it in front of the house that was vacant next to them. Only in Tracy can you get entertainment like this. I think the best was seeing things that we put in our pile in others peoples piles as I drove down the street. Would you call that buyers remorse maybe? Who knows! All I know is that Bryan and I have decided that we really do need a little bit of ghetto in our lives, Tracy gives us just the right amount!

This is what was left of our poor BBQ

fun pictrues of the kiddos...

Chris doing a little sleep reading....notice the giant drool mark.

Modeling moms sunglasses

Pretty girl and her bow


I think I like this park thing.

Here is the scooter king doing a little one foot action

I love the stroller!

Time flies...

Man does time fly...I feel bad looking at the last post realizing that it was over two months ago. I think all the excuses are now invalid. We finally have our wireless Internet and cameras fixed. Now we just have the task of updating everyone on the last few months.

Dani is fast approaching the 1 year mark. She is continuing to be a sweet mellow baby ( I think God knew what kind of brother she had.) Just this week she started walking. I think she got up to 10 steps today at church. Kids seem to know when their parents are not there, and then they do all the cool things. Dani is opposite of Chris who walked first and then got his balance and figured out how to stand up. Whereas Dani will stand all day long doing knee bends with the occasional step. The crawling is still the preferred method of travel in the house though. She seems to think she is aero dynamic and puts her head down when she wants to go faster. It is hilarious to watch.

As for Chris he is also getting close to a birthday...believe it or not he will be 4 at the end of May. Chris seems to always keep things exciting in our house. Thankfully we have actually been able to avoid the ER since January. Something tells me that as he gets more and more daring on the scooter....we may be there soon. He still loves playing baseball, going to the park with Sierra, and most recently playing policeman. He seems to think that as soon as he puts on Bryan's old work boots that he is instantly a policeman. Don't worry unlike Chris, Bryan actually does where pants to work. Somehow Dani is always the one that he ends up putting in jail. I think this is just the beginning of the torture that a big brother somehow feels obligated to put a younger sibling through.

The ever changing life we seem to have as parents is great though.... Bryan and I realize that no 2 days are ever the same around here. We actually got away for a weekend to in March for a good friends wedding. It is always nice to remember who you were before we had kids, plus the benefit of seeing all my old college friends. It had been way too long.

Hopefully the posts and pictures will be more frequent now a the next new , gross, fun or random thing occurs at our house.

Happy Valentine's Day

This year I took the kids to get some pictures done for Daddy on Valentine's Day, they were a hit of course. Dani is 9 months old now and Chris is rapidly approaching 4. We are happy to report that after some stubbornness and a lot of patience...Chris has mastered the potty and has been accident free with the big boy undies for a week now. Dani is the queen of crawling and standing up, walking is just around the corner.

couldn't resist

Some pictures just have to be taken....there has to be a lightbulb joke out there for this one!

a little late

I realize that this is the February ....
but better late then never. Here are a few pictures of the kids from New Year's. Chris, Dani and I headed over to the Chance's with the Kundert's, Byington's and few other people. We had a nice dinner, played games and all the kids actually pretty much entertained themselves. Dani nodded off around 9pm but the rest of the kids fought the good fight and made it till 12am. Believe it or not for a bunch of 2, 3, and 4 year olds, they were in great shape. Granted I think Chris was asleep before I finished buckling him in the car seat on the way home. All in all we had a blast spending the New Year with friends!

the WHOLE francis family

When we were in Florida for our early Christmas, we took a family picture for Bryan's parents to use on their Christmas card. We introduced them to the ease of doing Costco Christmas cards....especially considering they sent out 800 cards. I don't think I have met 800 people in my lifetime, let alone have that many friends to send cards to.

switching over

If you have not already guessed it we are in the process of switching over to this blog from our previous site with mac. With the renewal coming up, FREE sounded better and better. So be patient as we figure things out here and get organized. We still have a link on here for the old site, it should be active for another month. Bryan has the camera at work with him tonight, otherwise I would post some recent pictures. I will just have to make sure that I don't post his pictures from work, I don't think you would like to so those.

Stay tuned for more...

Score is Dani 1, Chris 0

I am starting to think that our family is just going to be "that family" that lives at the doctor's office or hospital for the next 18 years.

January started off pretty good for us.....no major problems. We knew that there were going to be a few trips out to Children's Hospital to see the GI specialist. I think I jinxed it one day when I thought to myself one day while waiting at the hospital "it is kind of nice to be here for a planned visit" (the mood is totally different).

As you may recall last year we started the year off with Chris in the ER after the bottle of nighttime cough syrup was consumed in one sitting. We were a few days away from making it through the first month when the flu hit the Francis family. I don't want to get too graphic but I was amazed with the amount of liquid that can come out of an eight month old baby. It was one of those moments where you wish you had a camera just to try an explain the sheer volume. When Dani finally stopped barfing, I was standing in the middle of the family room (after quickly getting off the couch) holding my little girl while completely drenched from head to toe with barf. I think Bryan was actually disgusted that I just stood there holding her while this all panned out. Bryan is more inclined to turn Dani away from himself and strategically aim. Later we were attempting to go to Target to get necessary supplies. As Bryan was getting Dani out of the car and into the stroller the barfing began. In a calm and very sly manner he aimed her between our car and the one next to us. Not a pretty site, but luckily it was raining that day.

All this to say we did end up in the hospital with her for dehydration. Poor little Dani had to endure the zophran shot (similar to Chris in ER visit 3 last year) and then some liquids. She was a trooper, I have to say I was impressed that Dani silenced the waiting room when she oh so violently yacked all over Bryan while waiting to be seen.

So as January comes to a close the ER score for the year is Dani 1, Chris 0. Hopefully this is a tally that we will not need to update frequently, but we know not to hold our breath. I just hope there are some other families out there like us so I don't feel quite as bad!